The Sociology department is very excited to share the news that Katherine (Kati) Barahona-López has been selected as the Division of Social Sciences Chancellor's Dissertation Fellowship recipient for the 2017-2018 academic year. This competitive fellowship is one of two divisional awards available and will allow Kati to focus on writing her dissertation.

As an entering student, Kati was the recipient of the prestigious Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship and during her time in the sociology doctoral program has developed an expertise on unaccompanied minors from Central America, immigrant integration, structural vulnerability, and institutionalization. This past March, Kati formed part of the inaugural class of the University of Chicago Ethnography Incubator which brought together faculty and six outstanding graduate students to discuss ethnographic and participant observation methods.

Kati’s dissertation is titled “’Can’t I Just Live!?’ Structural Vulnerability by Unaccompanied Minors from Central America” is chaired by Professor Dana Takagi. This interdisciplinary and mixed methods dissertation will contribute to the field of sociology by highlighting how deportation processes push unaccompanied minors to highlight their vulnerability in order to receive services from legal and social service institutions. Kati’s dissertation demonstrates that narratives of suffering does not transcend the institutional logic of immigration law or social service resources, but rather is embedded into their institutional practices.